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KMT lawmaker tries, fails to reduce secret spending

The Ministry of Foreign Affairs' confidential budget for next fiscal year sailed through a legislative committee meeting yesterday, though legislators said debate over proposed cuts was often heated.

"We've approved the bill as proposed," a DPP legislator who requested anonymity told the Taipei Times.

"The amount proposed by the foreign ministry was NT$600 million less than this year's budget, so we decided not to make further cuts, given the steep reductions in recent years," the lawmaker said.

The joint meeting of the legislature's Foreign and Overseas Affairs Committee and Budgets and Final Accounts Committee spent most of the day yesterday reviewing the ministry's confidential budget for next year.

By 3pm, the committee had approved next year's proposed budget of NT$5.3 billion as it was requested, several other lawmakers said.

On economic assistance to the troubled Solomon Islands, one of Taiwan's diplomatic allies in the South Pacific region, the DPP lawmaker said "we've proposed a large sum of money" to assist the country -- NT$100 million.

On Dec. 5, the islands held elections, the first since a bloody two-year conflict between rival groups climaxed in an armed coup which ousted the government of then prime minister Bartholomew Ulufa'alu. Strife there ended late last year with the signing of a peace accord that is still in place.

Prime Minister Manesseh Sogavare, who was appointed to head the government until elections could be held, managed to hold onto his seat but his party was badly beaten.

With his party in retreat, Sogavare gave up his bid to return to the premier's position.

A proposed aid package to East Timor, which the DPP legislator described as "a rather new item," is an apparent bid to "seek an enhancement of ties" between Taiwan and that country, which will declare its formal independence from Indonesia in May.

The exact value of the proposed aid package for East Timor, however, is difficult to ascertain as it was incorporated into a general aid scheme that involved countries in Southeast Asia, including Thailand, Indonesia and Malaysia, the veteran lawmaker said.

Much of yesterday's debate resulted from the protests of a lone KMT lawmaker, who objected to attempts to pass the foreign ministry's budget proposal without revision.

Previously, lawmakers had said all ministries would be required to cut their proposed budgets by a prescribed amount.

"I found the proposal unreasonable and unacceptable," said dissenting KMT legislator Kwan Yuk-noan (關沃暖), when asked to comment on the day's events.

Kwan said that the bill was probably initiated by the foreign ministry and put forward for a vote by sympathetic lawmakers.

Insiders say the rationale behind the ministry's initiative was to guard against further depreciation of the New Taiwan dollar because some of the budget's items are listed in US dollar terms, sources said.

Further depreciation of the NT dollar could significantly inflate the cost of US-dollar denominated aid packages whose effectiveness could be undermined if cuts were made by the committee.

"To guard against such a development, the proposal was tabled so that the foreign ministry should not be subject to another round of cuts," the DPP lawmaker said.

Nevertheless Kwan said it was "ridiculous" for the joint-committee meeting to pass the proposal as "the legislature should supervise the government, not protect any branch of the government -- including the foreign ministry."
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